Lori Harder argues that middle age prompts women to leave relationships that are merely good enough, not actively bad. Hormonal shifts lower their tolerance for nurturing partners, and cultural pressure to stay with a decent man makes the decision harder. Women reach a point where mediocrity stops feeling acceptable.
We don't talk a lot about leaving the good enough marriage. We talk a lot about leaving the abusive one where it's obvious, like, girl, you should go, right? But we are seeing a lot of, especially women, leaving their relationships and/or their marriages. I think it has to do with our age. Middle age kind of grabs you by the shoulders and shakes you and says, you're round in the corner. Yeah, what do you want to do with this? It's not part of your life here. Nobody's getting out of this alive. Yeah, I do think that the shifting of hormones makes us get to a place where we have a lower tolerance for nurturing other people, which means we are not tolerating the things that previously might have been easier to tolerate. A lot of people who are in good enough marriages, like, is it really good enough? To quote TikTok, you know, he's a good man, Savannah. Like, I had one. Yeah, it still wasn't right for me in this lifetime that I'm in.
